


While there’s moonlight

by Hypatia_66



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Moon, Quotations, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 16:15:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18154133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hypatia_66/pseuds/Hypatia_66
Summary: LJ Short Affair challenge. Prompts: heaven, brownJust occasionally, the pessimist/optimist roles are reversed





	While there’s moonlight

It had become a familiar news item, yet when it finally happened the stark black and white images looked so improbable. The idea of a man climbing down a simple ladder, to set foot on another world was so banal … but enthralling, epic.

“It’s extraordinary,” said Illya, still a little sceptical of its ultimate value. “You spend huge resources on putting a man on the moon, even while fighting an expensive war in the Far East. What will it achieve and how can the country afford it?”

“It’s been two or three billion dollars a year for the last five or six years,” said George, his eyes glued to the TV set.

“And how much has the war cost?”

“More than ten times as much,” George replied.

“No wonder Waverly complains when you claim for yet another suit, Napoleon.”

Napoleon smiled grimly. “I haven’t killed quite as many people, though,” he said. “The war has cost tens of thousands of lives. And for what?”

“Thucydides said that wars are fought when ‘one side thinks that the profits to be won outweigh the risk to be incurred’,” said Illya whose expression and spread hands were eloquent. Illya’s colleagues glanced at each other and rolled their eyes. The war was Napoleon’s not-quite secret passion. He could share it with Illya who had no particular views on the subject, other than the revulsion felt by anyone who had lived through a war, but there were other colleagues who supported the war.

At the end of the broadcast they all dispersed and Napoleon and Illya returned to their office.

“I wonder what colour the moon really is,” said Illya.

“Brown, most likely,” said Napoleon. “Everything else is where there’s no life, isn’t it? Remember that photograph the astronauts took of an Earthrise, last year?”

Illya looked up and smiled. “Yes. Like a beautiful blue marble, but looking so fragile.”

“– and still we fight each other over pointless differences.”

“That’s because we’re too small to see how stupid it is.”

“You don’t think this will be a ‘giant leap for mankind’, then?”

“Doubt it,” said Illya matter-of-factly. “We haven’t evolved to a high enough level to manage a leap.”

“’We know what we are, but know not what we may be’” Napoleon said, musingly. His devotion to Hamlet was another thing he tended not to share with anyone other than Illya, whose familiarity with the Bard, and other poets for that matter, made such conversations intelligible.

“The point is, we only _think_ we know what we are, Napoleon,” said he. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth…”

 “Is that the best you can do?” said Napoleon, condemning one of the more famous lines in the play.

“I thought that was quite appropriate. The moon’s only a quarter of a million miles away,” he said, “It’s still just a step. That’s nothing compared to size of the universe.”

“Do you have _any_ romance in your soul?” asked Napoleon.

“Yes, I do. You’d be surprised.”

<><> 

“’It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents’.”

“Cliché,” said Illya, trying to see any portion of the road each time the hardworking wiper blades achieved a brief clarity. “What we need is some moonlight.” And with that, suddenly, there was a break in the clouds and the moon sailed free. “’Ah, Moon of my Delight’… now I can see.”

“She seems sullied, now that men have left footprints on her,” said Napoleon. “’With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies!’”

Illya glanced at him. “The moon is an inanimate bit of rock in the vast eternity of the universe,” he said provocatively. “It’s bombarded with stuff all the time.” And, just as suddenly, the moon disappeared and the rain resumed.

“See what happens when you insult her,” Napoleon commented drily.

“You need to be careful in your defence of her, my friend. The moon is frequently considered to be a symbol of desire.”

Napoleon smiled. “I know,” he said.

“And a fertility goddess,” Illya added.

Napoleon pondered for a moment. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

Illya snorted.

Napoleon looked at him. “And that’s how romance manifests itself in your soul, is it?”

“’A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, always hopeful of romance and adventure’, actually,” Illya said, as one confiding a secret.

“Who said that?”

“Charlie Chaplin.”

The sky now cleared and the road ahead gleamed faintly in the moonlight. “You see?” said Illya. “She’s still there, still beautiful. ‘Good things come to those who wait’.”

Napoleon sighed.

<><><><>

**Author's Note:**

> Title: a line from Let’s face the music and dance, by Irving Berlin.
> 
> Thucydides on the evil of war: History, IV, 4
> 
> ’We know what we are, but know not what we may be’. Shakespeare: Hamlet (IV, v. 43)
> 
> ‘There are more things in heaven and earth…’ Shakespeare: Hamlet (I, v. 167-8)
> 
> ’It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents’. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Paul Clifford (opening line).
> 
> ‘Ah Moon of my Delight…’ Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the Ruba’iyát of Omar Khayyám, (Ed. 1. lxxv).
> 
> ‘With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies!’ Sir Philip Sidney: Astrophel and Stella (Sonnet 1).
> 
> ‘Good things come to those who wait’. (Common proverb).


End file.
